The Enterprise of Death (59 page)

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Everyone from last time, plus all the people I either didn’t know then or blanked on when the pressure of trying to thank everyone kicked in. Some names to add to the old list: Jason, Angie, Stephen, Marc, Mark, Tess, Robert, Josh, Amanda, Philip, Paul, Kathy, Allyson, Mike, Isaiah, Chris, Ashley, Evan, Francesca, Scott, Neil, Sandi, Kevin, Ned, Nigel, Tasha, Melissa, David, Lisa, Kelly, Alicia, Kay, Katie, the Tanzers, the Ferrells, and all the fans who took the time to write after reading
The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart
. I also need to thank the owners and baristas at Folsom Street Coffee, especially J.C., Chris, Rick, Krista, John, Lily, Jessie, Staci, Teak, Shawn, and Serena, for fostering such an excellent working environment; the Widow’s Bane for providing fine music to revise a novel full of the undead to; the Oskar Blues, Rogue, Stone, Ska, Odell, Left Hand, and Great Divide brewing companies for providing such delicious elixirs to soothe my overtaxed brain when I was finished; and the Fermentation Lounge for introducing me to so many of the aforementioned breweries in the first place.

Rather than the hand metaphor (and cheesy, prolonged yuckyucking) of last time, I think simply thanking my beta readers more directly is in order. My profuse thanks therefore go to J. T. Glover, S. J. Chambers, my wife Raechel Dumas, and especially
Molly Tanzer, all of whom helped me time and again in the struggle to land this project. I should also expressly thank John Gove for dedicating his Saturdays to being a grand hiking partner—without such opportunities for decompression I might have collapsed along the way. My parents Bruce and Lisa, my brother Aaron and sister Tessa, my in-laws, and all the rest of my family should no doubt be thanked again as well, so there we are.

I also can’t praise Orbit enough for being such a great publisher, especially Tim, Jack, Alex, Lauren, Jennifer, Mari, Devi, and DongWon in the U.S., and Bella, Rose, Anna, Emily, Darren, and Joanna in the U.K.

I must also thank my agent Sally and her assistant Mary for being such great friends and associates, and finally, my copy editor Roland Ottewell, without whose attentions this book would not be nearly so coherent. So again, a heartfelt thanks to all involved in bringing this book to you, the reader, who is deserving of more than a little thanks for taking a chance on my work. This wouldn’t be possible without you, and I thank you for it.

Finally, I need to offer my appreciation for those individuals whom I so shamelessly conscripted into this novel: Niklaus Manuel Deutsch, his wife Katharina, Doctor Paracelsus, Albrecht von Stein, and especially old Boabdil were no doubt very different from how I have written them here, and I hope their shades accept my sincere thanks, and apologies for rendering them in such a fictitious—and often unflattering—manner. This novel would not be the work it is without the real lives of real people to inspire me, and as much fun as it was to play with their histories I would never wish anyone to mistake my versions of these individuals for the actual historical figures. Paracelsus, at least, would presumably appreciate the exaggerations.

Jesse Bullington
’s formative years were spent primarily in rural Pennsylvania, the Netherlands and Tallahassee, Florida. He is a folklore enthusiast who holds a bachelor’s degree in history and English from Florida State University. He currently resides in Colorado, and can be found online at
www.jessebullington.com

Find out more about Jesse Bullington and other Orbit authors by registering for the free monthly newsletter at
www.orbitbooks.net

T
o claim that the Brothers Grossbart were cruel and selfish brigands is to slander even the nastiest highwayman, and to say they were murderous swine is an insult to even the filthiest boar. They were Grossbarts through and true, and in many lands such a title still carries serious weight. While not as repugnant as their father nor as cunning as his, horrible though both men were, the Brothers proved worse. Blood can go bad in a single generation or it can be distilled down through the ages into something truly wicked, which was the case with those abominable twins, Hegel and Manfried.

Both were average of height but scrawny of trunk. Manfried possessed disproportionately large ears, while Hegel’s nose dwarfed many a turnip in size and knobbiness. Hegel’s copper hair and bushy eyebrows contrasted the matted silver of his brother’s crown, and both were pockmarked and gaunt of cheek. They had each seen only twenty-five years but possessed beards of such noteworthy length that from even a short distance they were often mistaken for old men. Whose was longest proved a constant bone of contention between the two.

Before being caught and hanged in some dismal village far
to the north, their father passed on the family trade; assuming the burglarizing of graveyards can be considered a gainful occupation. Long before their granddad’s time the name Grossbart was synonymous with skulduggery of the shadiest sort, but only as cemeteries grew into something more than potter’s fields did the family truly find its calling. Their father abandoned them to their mother when they were barely old enough to raise a prybar and went in search of his fortune, just as his father had disappeared when he was but a fledgling sneak-thief.

The elder Grossbart is rumored to have died wealthier than a king in the desert country to the south, where the tombs surpass the grandest castle of the Holy Roman Empire in both size and affluence. That is what the younger told his sons, but it is doubtful there was even the most shriveled kernel of truth in his ramblings. The Brothers firmly believed their dad had joined their grandfather in Gyptland, leaving them to rot with their alcoholic and abusive mother. Had they known he actually wound up as crow-bait without a coin in his coffer it is doubtful they would have altered the track of their lives, although they may have cursed his name less— or more, it is difficult to say.

An uncle of dubious legitimacy and motivation rescued them from their demented mother and took them under his wing during their formative man-boy years. Whatever his relation to the lads, his beard was undeniably long, and he was as fervent as any Grossbart before him to crack open crypts and pilfer what sullen rewards they offered. After a number of too-close shaves with local authorities he absconded in the night with all their possessions, leaving the destitute Brothers to wander back to their mother, intent
on stealing whatever the wizened old drunk had not lost or spent over the intervening years.

The shack where they were born had aged worse than they, the mossy roof having joined the floor while they were ransacking churchyards along the Danube with their uncle. The moldy structure housed only a badger, which the Grossbarts dined on after suffering only mild injures from the sleepy beast’s claws. Inquiring at the manor house’s stable, they learned their mother had expired over the winter and lay with all the rest in the barrow at the end of town. Spitting on the mound in the torrential rain, the Brothers Grossbart vowed they would rest in the grand tombs of the Infidel or not at all.

Possessing only their wide-brimmed hats, rank clothes, and tools, but cheered by the pauper’s grave in which their miserable matriarch rotted, they made ready to journey south. Such an expedition required more supplies than a pair of prybars and a small piece of metal that might have once been a coin, so they set off to settle an old score. The mud pulled at their shoes in a vain attempt to slow their malicious course.

The yeoman Heinrich had grown turnips a short distance outside the town’s wall his entire life, the hard lot of his station compounded by the difficult crop and the substandard hedge around his field. When they were boys the Brothers often purloined the unripe vegetation until the night Heinrich lay in wait for them. Not content to use a switch or his hands, the rightly furious farmer thrashed them both with his shovel. Manfried’s smashed-in nose never returned to its normal shape and Hegel’s indented left buttock forever bore the shame of the spade.